Updates: The Digital Scholarship and Digital Cultural Heritage Collections Working Group

The Digital Scholarship and Digital Cultural Heritage Collections Working Group is pleased to announce its continuation for a further year. The group will be co-chaired by Kirsty Lingstadt and Caleb Derven.

Publications from the Working Group

This past spring, Cambridge University Press’ Art Libraries Journal published a case study, authored by Working Group members Lotte Wilms, Caleb Derven, and Merisa Martinez, on the inception of the Working Group in 2017 and its work through to 2020. The article is available as Open Access through Art Libraries Journal (https://doi.org/10.1017/alj.2021.6).

Key Working Group Themes for 2021 – 2022

During 2021/22, the Working Group will be engaging in the following areas of activity with a focus on the initial three key themes and an emerging theme where the group aims to raise awareness of the topic and to explore if it should become a more substantive theme (should the group continue beyond 2022). Below are the key themes for 2021 – 2022.

1. Responsible Use of Digital Collections (formerly Digital Collections)

The theme of Digital Collections was focused on the creation and practical technical accessibility of digital collections as data. The working group was examining how collections are offered to DH researchers, which barriers they encounter, and how libraries can successfully offer their collections across their user base. This will continue with a stronger focus on access across borders, unwanted bias in digital collections, and facilitating easy access through technology as well as looking at how AI can be used, ethical use of collections, and FAIR. Within this theme, we will seek active collaboration with CERL and the LIBER Working Group on Copyright and Legal Matters.

2. Digital Competencies/Providing Expertise

The focus here has been on how libraries provide expertise and work will now focus more strongly on the digital competencies that are required to support digital scholarship from the library as this is emerging as a strong need as of 2020. Within this theme, we will seek active collaboration with the LIBER Working Group on Digital Skills and the global Building Library Labs network.

3. Building Relationships

This theme will continue its work looking at how libraries can set out to build the relationships that benefit them and the researcher when working with digital humanities. The working group will be looking at the various ways in which libraries raise awareness about their work and collections and also how they keep in touch with their research community.  Within this theme, we will seek active collaboration with the global Building Library Labs network and DARIAH.

4. Emerging Theme: Digital Impact

This work proved challenging to take forward especially given the current circumstances and therefore the focus will be to raise more awareness of the topic through 1-2 blog posts and potentially some activity at the upcoming LIBER Mid-Term Event exploring this for future work.  The original aim of this work was to explore how the impact of digital scholarship and digital collections can be measured as this helps secure ongoing resources and funding for these activities. Collaboration with DARIAH and Europeana had been identified.

Become a Working Group Member

We invite participation and collaboration from all LIBER stakeholders. Anyone interested in becoming a member of the working group can contact Kirsty Lingstadt (Kirsty.Lingstadt@ed.ac.uk) and Caleb Derven (caleb.derven@ul.ie).

[Photo by Ståle Grut on Unsplash]